UK businesses have little or no spare capacity for hiring, warns REC

The UK's total unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6% in the three months to OctoberReuters

UK companies will find it hard to recruit additional staff as the nation's employment is at an all-time-high and more than a third of business (36%) have no capacity to take on more work, according to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC).

The organisation's JobsOutlook survey also found that almost three in five employers (57%) have "little capacity" to hire more workers.

"With employment levels at an all-time high and the economy strengthening, businesses will find it increasingly difficult to recruit new staff to increase their capacity," said Kevin Green, the chief executive of the REC.

"The priority now is to ensure that employers are able to recruit the talent they need.

"That means making it easier for businesses to employ workers from overseas and the UK remaining part of the European Union (EU).

"At home, we need to focus on improving our education system so that the next generation are equipped with the kinds of skills employers are calling for."

The research also revealed, among many other things, that more than four out of ten (43%) of employers want to hire more agency workers in the next quarter, whilst 37% of respondents said that they plan to do so in the medium term.

The study also found that a vast majority of companies (80%) said that they use agency workers to gain short-term access to key strategic skills.

The survey also revealed a concern among employers about a potential shortage of workers with "education and training skills", with more than a quarter of employers (26%) raising this as an issue.

The figures come after the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that the UK's total unemployment rate had remained unchanged at 6% in the three months to October.

But the research body revealed that a record number of people, 30.8m, were in work over the same period.

In addition, the data showed that 22.54m people were in full-time work in the three months to October.